On March 29, 2013, ExxonMobil’s 850-mile Pegasus oil pipeline split open and spilled 210,000 gallons of Canadian dilbit across an Arkansas suburb.
The oil spill was a wake-up call about aging pipelines and specifically about the Pegasus, a 65-year-old line that most people near the spill site didn’t know existed. The pipe crisscrosses 13 Arkansas counties and 18 drinking water sources on its way to Texas—including the Maumelle watershed, a water source for 400,000 people in Central Arkansas. The rupture happened just eight pipeline miles from Maumelle.
In Part 2 of “Shattered by Oil“—an ICN co-production with This American Land—Pulitzer Prize-winner Elizabeth McGowan talks with water utility officials, residents and others about the “what-ifs”—and about how they’re working to get the pipeline relocated or shut down for good.
PART 1:
This video is part of a joint investigative project by InsideClimate News and the Arkansas Times. Funding for the project comes from readers who donated to an ioby.org crowdfunding campaign that raised nearly $27,000 and from the Fund for Investigative Journalism.
